I'm a restless VC hunting for cutting-edge technologies, maverick entrepreneurs and bold contrarian theses. I've funded or founded and serve on the Board of companies ranging from high-tech nuclear waste clean up (Kurion), breakthrough metamaterials with Bill Gates (Kymeta), 3D printing (Shapeways), emerging tech research (Lux Research) and much more. My life is the intersection of science and finance, and I believe the future is already here just unevenly distributed and that the best way to predict it is to invent it. I’m passionate about education reform and celebrating science and the right heroes. I Chair a Charter School (Coney Island Prep) in my native Coney Island Brooklyn, graduated from Cornell and am active term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. I hunt for low-probability high positive consequence outcomes (aka black swans) and contrarian takes on markets and technologies.

Leading The Charge Into Energy's Future with Dr. Arun Majumdar

Last month, we sat down for an exclusive interview with Dr. Arun Majumdar, the head of ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy). His agency exists to tackle the grand challenges of energy – from efficiency to smart grid to alternative energy and transportation fuels. It’s a prestigious feat to win an ARPA-E grant, and he’s the man at the top with a very unique vantage point. As the New Year begins, it’s worth considering our energy future as you read through highlights of the interview below.

Dr. Arun Majumdar, Director, ARPA-E

When you look at the U.S. today, what are some of the biggest energy challenges we face?

Our life in the U.S. today depends on access to energy. We don’t talk about it much, because we take it for granted, but let’s imagine for a second: What if our electricity were turned off for a day? For a week? What about a whole month? Our entire economy, and our lives, would come to a standstill. And what if our oil supply were turned off for a given period of time? We’d be in trouble. In the transportation sector, we have only one fuel—oil—and we import roughly half of it. Those imports cost us nearly one billion dollars a day. And while we may not run out of oil in the next several decades, access to it could be an issue, because of increasing demand around the world. Environmental impact is another issue, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

So whether we consider the input of fuel and electricity to our society, or the output of emissions, either way we have a long-term problem. On one hand, we’ve got economic and national security risks as they relate to our access to energy, and on the other hand, we’ve got environmental risks. That’s the paradigm that we live in, and in the long run, with the growing global population, it’s unsustainable.

When you think about solving those challenges, what advantages does our nation possess?

One of our great strengths is that we have the world’s best infrastructure in science and engineering, one that has always come to the rescue in times of need. We’ve always relied on science and engineering to get us out of difficult situations, keep us competitive, and ensure a secure future for our children and grandchildren. Over the last 150 years, our nation has attracted the best brains in the world. But that phenomenon alone—simply having the best brains in science and engineering—is not sufficient. We need to translate that brainpower into business. And we also have a strong ecosystem for entrepreneurship and for business, with the world’s best financial system and most open capital markets. If we can leverage the strength of each of these parts in an aligned way, and apply them to work in the energy field, we’ll be unbeatable. But we face a very competitive world.

We’ve got to figure out how to create jobs and grow our economy sustainably, using our own resources and alternatives to oil imports. We have to look at ways to produce clean electricity, and we need to shift the paradigm within the next ten to fifteen years. Other nations realize this need, and they are investing heavily to make this transition as quickly as possible, because whoever gets there first will then figure out how to sell it to the rest of the world. Ultimately, we have to decide whether we’re going to be buyers of sustainable energy, or whether we’re going to be sellers.

Now with that context in mind, what is the role of ARPA-E?

ARPA-E’s role is to focus on energy technology breakthroughs, the quantum leap breakthroughs that don’t yet exist but have the potential to make today’s technologies obsolete. We take risks, so some of our projects will fail, but that’s okay because we learn from the failures. We invest in technologies that are too risky for the private sector. If they succeed, these technologies will pave the foundation for entirely new industries that could provide greater economic and national security for the United States.

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